As you can see in the photo below, even Pikachu (L) as well as Shinto’s trickster fox spirit, Kitsune/狐 (R), are protesting the continuing Fukushima nuclear fcukup in central London.

London Evening Standard | 15 March 2014
Dozens of people protested in central London against nuclear power today following the third anniversary of the Fukushima disaster in Japan… protesters gathered at Hyde Park Corner before marching past the Japanese Embassy and one of the buildings housing the Tokyo Electric Company…more…

I would love to see how this new facial ID system handles all the outliers* such as the 10-to-20% of the Japanese population who wear surgical masks during both the winter flu season and the 4-to-6 month long pollen season.

Facial ID tech to be set at Osaka stationThe Yomiuri Shimbun | January 30, 2014
…The station, which serves 820,000 passengers per day, is scheduled to be the stage of an unusually large study on tracking location data using facial-recognition technology…
…Each camera is to photograph people’s faces within a three-square-meter area, and assign each face an ID based on its characteristics.
When a person is recognized by another camera, the time and location will be recorded. Each person’s behavior will then be tracked for one week…more...

Outliers ”Я” Us : I am one of these outliers for facial recognition. Whenever I go to work at the Japanese R&D center of Toshiba and I try to walking in on crutches wearing a hoodie, their automatic entry authorization camera system fails to recognize my face or that I’m a human.WARNING, WARNING: Quadruped alien identified.

*PM Abe’s glow-in-the-dark gifts are intended to be “inflationary” as it is the stated policy of “Abenomics” (Wiki) to jumpstart the Japanese economy by increasing government spending for the military and for public works such as fixing TEPCO Corporation’s nuclear plant meltdown in Fukushima.

Oarai city in Ibaraki Prefecture has a problem. The city is down the coast (Google Maps)) from the continuing Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster. Needless to say tourism is way, waaaay down in Oarai, and they are hoping their new mascot “Araippe” will boost the number of visitors to the area.
According to various Japanese press releases such as the Asahi Shimbun (2013 Oct. 17–Google Translate), their new mascot “Araippe” is made up of the local seafood specialties. As shown below, Araippe’s “charm point” is his coat of whitebait (one of my favorite Japanese delicacies) that hangs his body like hair. Araippe’s mouth is a clam another local delicacy, and his tail is a clam rake.

Araippe is further described as a vivacious boy who loves fireworks, and who shakes around all the time as he is so happy.
However, Japanese social media is not so positive about Araippe. The reaction on Twitter Japan is that Araippe looks like a “mass of tentacles” or “Medusa” and is “creepy” and “gross.” Even the mayor of Oarai city said that Araippe, “looks like an old mop.”

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“Whitebait” is the immature fry of fish that are 25 and 35 millimeters long. In the market here Japan, I buy trays (see left) of whitebait called “Shirasu” for a reasonable price, 300 to 500 yen–about $3 to 5 USD. Typically Shirasu/whitebait is blanched in salt water and served on top of rice as shown below. (Wiki)

The continuing jellyfish invasion has been causing a havoc at nuclear power plants clogging them and shutting them down in Japan (3Yen / 2012-10-27) and throughout the world (tomonews.net / 2013-10-03).
The solution?KILLER ROBOTS!…the JEROS—Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarm.

Robot meant to remove jellyfish might just be making more jellyfishOctober 7, 2013, 1:34 p.m.
…Developed by a team of engineers in Korea, JEROS is a robot designed for destroying jellyfish swarms, like the one that recently clogged the cooling pipes at a nuclear power plant…More…